Friday, December 30, 2011

I mean we're heading into the primary season now with the first big election in Iowa in mere days. Add to that Ron Paul's sweeping momentum and believe me, I've been holding back so that I don't burn you guys out on Ron Paul stuff. Let me know if the Ron Paul focus here as of late has been too much for your tastes, just right, or that you even wouldn't mind it (or even like it) if I blogged about Ron Paul even more. Lemme know!

1. A politician making an inoffensive remark about a politically-protected minority group (or gender) will be forced to apologize for being “insensitive.” He will have to grovel before the proper PC authorities and swear that if he could, he would have marched with Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. (or whichever group icon it may be). This may also include asking honest questions about points about liberal dogma ranging from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to speech codes.

2. A foreign lobby will pressure President Obama to commit U.S. troops or U.S. airpower to assist in a civil war, border dispute, or to prevent “ethnic cleansing” in a region that is either oil-rich or not remotely tied to America’s national interests. There will be no declaration of war or even a congressional “resolution” to authorize the action. Republicans will complain that even though Obama does exactly what they want they will insist that he appeared weak in the process, bringing great shame to America.

Want to know what each Republican presidential candidate has said about the Federal Reserve and monetary policy? Check it out. No politics or spin here, just the facts and the candidates' positions in their own words. Read it all at The Silver Underground.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Kent Sorenson, the one-time chair of Michele Bachmann's Iowa campaign who threw a jolt into the caucuses by switching to Ron Paul tonight, said he only told Paul officials of his decision when he arrived at a Des Moines rally for the congressman tonight

"10 minutes ago," Sorenson, a GOP state senator, told POLITICO about when the Paul campaign found out he was moving to their camp.

In one of the most surprising moments of the 2012 campaign, Sorenson strolled on stage just moments before Paul was set to speak and declared that he had switched his allegiance. Just hours earlier, he had been at a Bachmann campaign event with his former candidate. Sorenson's switch is a major boost to Paul's campaign, which has been dogged by criticism from establishment Republicans that his support here was largely among Democrats and independents.

Bachmann goes into damage control:

A furious Bachmann accused her former chair of being bought off.

"Kent Sorenson personally told me he was offered a large sum of money to go to work for the Paul campaign," said the Minnesotan in a statement

Asked why Bachmann would make such an accusation, Benton shot back: "Because she just lost her campaign chairman and her campaign is floundering."

The state senator said he called Bachmann on the phone right before he arrived at the Iowa state fairgrounds, where the Paul event is being held.

What's extremely significant here, is the former Bachmann supporter's reason for defecting to Ron Paul in Iowa:

Sorenson declined to share her reaction, but suggested the GOP contest had become a two-man race and that he wanted to defeat Mitt Romney.

"I adore Michele Bachmann, but the fact of the matter is I believe we have an opportunity to take Romney out here in Iowa and I believe that person is Ron Paul," he said behind the stage while his new candidate addressed about 500 supporters.

One of Michele Bachmann’s top campaign advisers is breaking with his own candidate to defend Kent Sorenson, the Bachmann campaign’s former Iowa chairman who publicly defected to Ron Paul on Wednesday.

Wes Enos, Bachmann’s Iowa political director, released a statement Thursday defending Sorenson from Bachmann’s accusation that Paul offered him money to switch allegiances.

In a statement distributed by Sorenson, Enos stated “unequivocally” that Sorenson’s decision was “in no way financially motivated.”

“His decision had more to do with the fact that the Ron Paul supporters have been something of a family to him since he was first elected in 2008 and here in the end, as it becomes more and more apparent that the caucus cycle is coming to an end, Kent believed that he needed to be with them as they stand on the cusp of a potential caucus upset,” Enos said in the statement.

“While I personally disagree with Kent’s decision, and plan to stay with Michele Bachmann because I truly believe in her, I cannot, in good conscious watch a good man like Kent Sorenson be attacked as a ‘sell-out’ … That is simply not the case, and it was not the basis of his decision,” he added.

So let me get this straight, people who want to ban guns "to keep us safer" would actually have preferred that 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez didn't have a gun on the night her house was attacked by three armed burglars when she was home alone?

Many well-meaning people believe that banning guns would make us safer, but my bleeding heart goes out to people like 11-year-old Alyssa Gutierrez, who used one of her family’s guns to defend herself and her family’s house when three armed burglars attempted to break in while young Alyssa was home alone.

Without a gun to protect herself, Alyssa, who was taught how to fire it just days before her home was attacked, would have been a helpless victim, not a proud and empowered defender of home and self. Those are actually Alyssa’s words, who told a local news channel: “I felt proud of myself.”

Listening to this man's story about his struggle against racial prejudice and Ron Paul's compassion, mercy, and justice literally brought a tear to my eye. Actions speak louder than words:

The Compassion of Dr. Ron Paul

James Williams of Matagorda County, Texas recounts a touching true story. Living in a still prejudice Texas In 1972, his wife had a complication with her pregnancy. No doctors would care for her or deliver their bi-racial child. In fact one of the hospital nurses called the police on James.

Dr. Ron Paul was notified and took her in, delivering their stillborn baby. Because of the compassion of Dr. Ron Paul, the Williams' never received a hospital bill for the delivery.

Ron Paul views every human being as a unique individual, afforded the rights endowed by our creator and codified in the Bill of Rights.

At the end of the video clip below, Ron Paul tells his radio interviewer that he doesn't recall this specific event from so many years ago because he did things like this so frequently. It was just how he practiced medicine:

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Local McDonald’s restaurant locations in Northern California will be kicking off 2012 with a kind gesture for California residents struggling in uncertain economic times. For a full two weeks, beginning on Monday, January 2, McDonald’s restaurants throughout Northern California will be giving a “free small Premium Roast Coffee made with 100 percent fire-roasted Arabaca Beans to all customers during business hours with no purchase necessary.”

If war is so good for the economy, why don’t we just declare a paintball war on Canada? Without using real weapons, we can avoid the moral problems of death and destruction wrought by war– hence paintball. Think of all the “economic stimulus” that would create!

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Nobody makes gratuitous accusations of racism on my watch and gets away with it. Nobody. The Alinskyite, race-baiting tactic is one I especially loathe for its maliciousness.When it rears its ugly head, I have responded again and again to set the record straight and expose the hypocrisy and deception of the race-baiting mainstream media.

I disagree with socialism and the idea that government can morally or effectively provide for our needs from cradle to grave, but I am willing to discuss and debate the matter with earnest proponents of that idea. I have no patience, however, for race-baiters. Gratuitously throwing around accusations of racism is a token of bad faith and a tactic of intellectually dishonest brutes.

The success of the piece that I published over the weekend entitled "The Ron Paul newsletter controversy is a textbook liberal smear campaign" is evidence that I'm not the only one who's tired of this garbage.

As of this writing, my Daily Caller piece has been recommended on Facebook 727 times (wait-- just refreshed the tab, and it's jumped to 732 since I started typing out this post). The former White House official has only been able to muster 39 measly Facebook recommendations. Mine was tweeted 233 times. Cohen's 14. I'd love to see The DC's traffic stats on the two pieces. Even the version of the op ed I published here at The Humble Libertarian has gotten more Facebook recommendations at 95 than Cohen's screed of scurrilous accusations.

Meanwhile, Judge Andrew Napolitano took notice and featured my oped on his Facebook page, to the fanfare of nearly a thousand likes and over 200 comments and shares:

Meanwhile a trusted source tells me that Ron Paul's numbers haven't been affected by the newsletter controversy. I guess the voters aren't buying into this bilge either. They care about the actual issues. Speaking of actual issues, Jack Hunter has my back on the DC's opinion pages, writing in a piece entitled, Why the establishment really fears Ron Paul:

As Ron Paul has risen in the polls, so has the frequency of attacks against him. “Any stick will do to beat a dog” goes the old saying, and the whacks against Paul range from reasonable to ridiculous. Expect the attacks to continue. Expect them to get more ridiculous.

And expect the worst attacks to come from Republicans.

Let’s cut the crap. The GOP establishment’s main beef with Ron Paul is his foreign policy. This ideological chasm is the subtext to most attacks on Paul from the right. To their credit, some of Paul’s critics are man (or woman) enough to confront the congressman on this subject directly. Paul welcomes these challenges and wants his fellow Republicans to debate what a true conservative foreign policy should look like. But the members of the Republican establishment do not want any such discussion. In fact, they fear it.

Most of the 2012 Republican presidential contenders subscribe primarily to a neoconservative foreign policy — the reflexively pro-war, world-police dogma that has been the dominant view in the Republican Party for at least a decade. When Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was asked by David Gregory on “Meet the Press” in October, “Would you describe yourself as a neoconservative then?” Cain replied: “I’m not sure what you mean by neoconservative … I’m not familiar with the neoconservative movement.” Cain was being honest — he simply knew how most Republicans viewed foreign policy and generally agreed with them. What was this “neoconservatism” Gregory spoke of? Said Cain: “I’m a conservative, yes. Neoconservative — labels sometimes put you in a box.”

“Neoconservative” certainly is a label that puts you in a box. The prefix alone invites curiosity (which is why neoconservatives don’t like it) and the term itself suggests that it represents something different from plain old conservatism (which is why neoconservatives really don’t like it). Neoconservative Max Boot outlined the ideology in 2002: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad … [The] agenda is known as ‘neoconservatism,’ though a more accurate term might be ‘hard Wilsonianism’ …”

And that brings me to my final point: in addition to the popularity of this oped, it has definitely received a lot of criticism from Ron Paul supporters everywhere I've seen it published or featured for framing the issue in terms of left and right. Sympathizing readers have pointed out in comment threads everywhere that Republicans are leading this smear campaign, not the liberal media. To quibble, I'd say that liberal media outlets like CNN and ThinkProgress are definitely leading this smear campaign and that some Republicans are just piling on to their own shame and detriment.

But more importantly: if, as I claim, this race-baiting smear is a favorite tactic of the big government left, what does that tell you about the neoconservative Republicans who are using it? They are revealing their true colors and their leftist pedigree as Trotskyite transplants from the radical left who migrated to the Republican Party to hijack its name and brand for their own political purposes of infiltration and deconstruction of the American political system created by our Founding Fathers. My friendly critics say: "It's not just liberals who are doing this, Wes! Conservatives have been the worst offenders!" My reply is: "Those are not conservatives. They are big government liberals and they always have been."

I stand by what I wrote. This newsletter controversy is a textbook liberal smear campaign by big government leftists. And it's not working.

Americans probably won’t be seeing a huge ticker-tape parade anytime soon for troops returning from Iraq, and it’s not clear if veterans of the nine-year campaign will ever enjoy the grand, flag-waving, red-white-and-blue homecoming that the nation’s fighting men and women received after World War II and the Gulf War.

Officials in New York and Washington say they would be happy to help stage a big celebration, but Pentagon officials say they haven’t been asked to plan one.

Most welcome-homes have been smaller-scale: hugs from families at military posts across the country, a somber commemoration by President Obama at Fort Bragg, N.C.

With tens of thousands of U.S. troops still fighting a bloody war in Afghanistan, anything that looks like a big victory celebration could be seen as unseemly and premature, some say.

“It’s going to be a bit awkward to be celebrating too much, given how much there is going on and how much there will be going on in Afghanistan,” said Don Mrozek, a military history professor at Kansas State University.

Uh, yeah it would be awkward, because it would remind us that these troops in Afghanistan are fighting and sacrificing in harm's way for the outcome of a foreign, tribal, civil war that is no longer related to America's national defense.

It would be awkward because those troops should get to come home too. Maybe instead of not throwing a parade for returning Iraq War veterans, we can bring the troops home from Afghanistan and throw a parade for all of them?

I am so damned sick of this country using its soldiers as political props, glibly mouthing the words "Support Our Troops," and yet continuing to abuse, ignore, and NOT support our troops.

2011 was the year that all of the people of the world stood up against the global financial elite and the economic destruction wrought by the century-long modern central banking paradigm. Read all about it in my latest at the Independent Voter Network.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

A racist these days is all too often really just a conservative winning an argument with a liberal. It should come as no surprise then, that the most principled conservative in the GOP race is being assailed and viciously smeared as a racist because of the content of a newsletter written twenty years ago which he credibly denies writing or having any knowledge of, and has repeatedly disavowed as contrary to his own views.

The racist smear is a common and favorite tactic of big government liberals and their collaborators in the mainstream media. In 2009, with the Tea Party movement in full swing, the mainstream media did anything they could to assail these patriotic conservatives as racists, searching desperately at every Tea Party event for any wayward protest sign that might have racist content that could be used to assassinate the character of an entire national grassroots movement. The media even went so far as to fabricate a racial confrontationbetween Tea Party protesters and Democratic members of Congress, but it was nothing more than a smear and a lie.

The Tea Party movement didn't have anything at all to do with race: it was about fiscal policy, monetary policy, systemic problems with our legislative process, and the proper nature and role of government. Tea Party protesters were all about diminishing the size, role, and influence of an out-of-touch, out-of-control, out-of-solutions, and out-of-money federal government. They were right. And just like the Tea Parties, Dr. Ron Paul's life, message, and record as a U.S. Congressman serving in his 12th term have absolutely nothing to do with race.

Ron Paul is not a racist and doesn't have a racist bone in his body. Throughout a political career that has spanned over four decades, Ron Paul's one consistent message has always been about fiscal policy, monetary policy, and the proper nature and role of government. He has a message that has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the liberty our Founding Fathers fought to preserve, a liberty that he believes is granted to us as individuals made in the image of our Creator, not as members of any collective group, including race. And that message has resounded throughout the nation, which is why he is leading the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire as his campaign continues to steadily gain momentum.

Why should we trust Ron Paul's unequivocal denial of having written or known anything about these racist rantings?

1. First there's his uncanny record of integrity for a Washington politician, whose harshest critics even begrudgingly acknowledge that the Texas congressman (and faithful husband of over fifty years) is one of the most honest, principled, and consistent men in politics today. President George Washington's integrity is often illustrated by the legendary story of the cherry tree in which a young Washington says: "I cannot tell a lie." The illustration would serve as aptly to illustrate Ron Paul's unquestioned integrity.

No one in the media really thinks Ron Paul is a racist or a liar. In fact, they know he isn't. Instead they simply ask him about the racist newsletters over and over again to smear him by association. That's how the textbook, liberal, race-baiting smear works. Whether the "target" (to use Alinsky's terminology) is really racist or not doesn't matter. Accomplishing the goal, which is to destroy the target's character for political reasons, is what matters to the left.

2. The second reason Ron Paul's adamant denials of racism are credible is that, as Andrew Sullivan points out, Ron Paul is "not exactly known for self-editing" --and that's an understatement. Ron Paul has an almost pathological inability to filter anything in his mind on its way out his mouth. It's not just that Ron Paul compulsively tells the truth-- he compulsively tells the whole truth about whatever he's thinking; the more passionate he is about it, the more impossible it is for him not to wax indignant about it. If it's on his mind, he can't hold it in.

You've seen him in the debates. One can easily picture frustrated campaign staffers coaching Ron Paul to stick to a more disciplined message during debates, only to watch nervously as he shares every stray thought he may have on an issue in jumbled fashion, whether it is likely to help him win the primary or not. As Ron Paul's mind wanders, so wanders his mouth. If Ron Paul were really a racist, why has he never, ever publicly-- or even privately to anyone's account-- said anything remotely racist? Surely we would have witnesses to Paul's racism piling on at this point in the news cycle. Surely there would be at least one video capturing an errant word of racism escaping the kind country doctor's lips. Surely Ron Paul would have had a macaca moment by now. But we don't, there isn't, and he hasn't. Because Ron Paul isn't racist.

3. The third reason we can trust Ron Paul is his frequent and close association with racial minorities. Throughout his career, Ron Paul has employed racial minorities in his office staff, including Hispanics, African Americans, and Jews: most notably, Eric Dondero, his chief of staff and travel aide for over a decade, who bitterly parted ways with Paul over foreign policy after 9-11. Despite his general hostility toward Ron Paul, Dondero, who is half Jewish on his mother's side, recently stated:

"I worked for the man for 12 years, pretty consistently. I never heard a racist word expressed towards Blacks or Jews come out of his mouth. Not once. And understand, I was his close personal assistant. It's safe to say that I was with him on the campaign trail more than any other individual."

So what then, could be the purpose in covering this issue so prolifically as the media has done this past week? The story has been around since the 1990s. There's been no new information to shed light on it. As Alex Alvarez put it at Mediaite.com:

"Why cover this now? And why so much? You’re not looking at a decades-old story from a different angle, you’re not revealing new information, you’re merely reheating the same embarrassing, racist meal you keep serving us every few years. This is becoming, at this point, the McRib of Embarrassing Political Stories. Why? [bold text mine for emphasis]"

As Ron Paul surges in the polls and the possibility of a Ron Paul win in Iowa becomes all too real, the mainstream media would look stupid-- instead of merely biased-- if they continued to ignore him and he actually pulled off a win in Iowa and even a strong second place finish in New Hampshire. But if the media doesn't smear Ron Paul with these racist newsletters from over twenty years ago that Paul did not write and does not agree with, they'll have to talk about the actual issues that Paul's campaign raises, issues that matter deeply to the American people, issues that Ron Paul has always been on the right side of throughout his twelve terms as a U.S. Congressman, both in word and in deed.

Ron Paul's critics will scoff at the idea that this has been a concerted effort to smear him for political reasons, blindingly obvious though it may be. They have and will continue to justify the media's actions as perfectly warranted by the story and no different than any other political candidate would have to contend with in Paul's shoes. Some will even go so far as to say that Paul's supporters are the ones who are letting bias affect their judgment. At The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes:

"I am a fan of Stanley Crouch's 'flip it' test as applied to bigotry... let us 'flip it,' and ask what we would think of Barack Obama who, under his own name, published such racism directed at whites and HIV. How seriously would we take the 'He didn't actually write it--he just published it' defense? Would we really be so forgiving?"

Is Coates trying to be funny? Is he deliberately choosing to ignore Barack Obama's twenty years as a close friend and active member in the church of Jeremiah Wright, who peddled radical racial demagoguery and nutty theories of his own about HIV? To give just one example, Wright claimed that the U.S. government invented HIV to perpetrate genocide against people of color. Yes, let's do please "flip it" for a moment and talk about the media's treatment of Mr. Obama then! By giving one speechaddressing the issue, Barack Obama laid the matter to rest, like waving a wand and making two decades of association with a racist demagogue-- along with any questions about Obama's judgment and his own views on race-- magically disappear. He disavowed Wright's words as "profoundly distorted" and the media took Obama at his word, ultimately letting the issue drop from the headlines. Today Barack Obama is President of the United States. If only Ron Paul received this kind of treatment!

Before concluding, let's use the "flip it" test for bigotry just one more time-- on the late Robert Byrd, the Democratic Senator from West Virginia and the longest-serving congressman in American history. When he died last year, Byrd was celebrated as a hero of the Democratic Party, a talented statesman, and a favorite son of West Virginia. A casual observer would have hardly been able to tell from the media's many lauds and accolades, that before he became a congressman, Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and held the title of "Exalted Cyclops." Robert Byrd once wrote in a letter to a segregationist senator from Mississippi:

"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side... Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."

He wrote again to a "Grand Wizard" of the Ku Klux Klan:

"The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."

Here isn't a man who simply neglected to be careful enough in overseeing what others were publishing in his name on a newsletter. This guy actually, literally had a white hood in his closet. Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a vicious racist. In Congress, he even filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Somehow all of this didn't stop the media, nor the electorate from allowing this man to become the most senior member of Congress and one of the most powerful men in Washington. When he died, he was unabashedly celebrated and his sins were swept under the rug, defended, polished, and explained away. The former Klansman was even praised in a statement released by the NAACP. Seriously.

The "flip it" test actually proves just how big of a smear campaign this entire newsletter business has been. If Ron Paul were not the most conservative candidate in a Republican presidential race, things would be different. Just what does a liberal or a Democrat have to do to actually be held to account for their racism by the mainstream media? Apparently even joining the Klan isn't enough to warrant condemnation if you have a "D" next to your name. But Heaven help any Republican or conservative who isn't by any stretch of the imagination even remotely racist if their candidacy threatens to shake up the establishment and restore power to the people from an out-of-control government in Washington.

This time of year, adherents to the world's great religions celebrate a Great Light shining in the Darkness. The setting is perfect for inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere, who have lived through the darkest months of the year and now anticipate the bright days ahead.

Absent its various sectarian interpretations, the symbolism should be especially meaningful for we libertarians, because we see our philosophy and way of life- which is the way of peace and mutual, voluntary cooperation among humankind- as a great light shining in the darkness of centuries of coercion, slavery, and war.

I believe our very lives span the winter solstice of human history. The oldest among us have seen in their own life times, the very blackest horrors governments have ever conceived or perpetrated against humanity. The great darkness of absolute statism in all of its ugly forms, from fascism to communism to military dictatorship, has blanketed the earth in its foul, polluted mire for a century.

Yet in the midst of this great darkness there has shined a great light, the dawn of a new era, and the promise of brighter days to come. Humanity is awakening. I say again- the humanity inside each of usis awakening to the hope and possibility of a free and open society. Playing no small part in this crucial turning point has been the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Shining a light on the darkness of ignorance, information famine, propaganda, and lies, the Internet is- without any rivals- the number one reason and hope I have for the belief that truth and freedom will prevail over lies and slavery in our lifetimes. Its advent is not only metaphorically a great light shining in the darkness, but quite literally, the use of Light itself to spread and store information. How perfectly poetical!

So I will leave you with the injunction to hope and to marvel at the Great Light men have wrought, and to fight tenaciously to keep that Light free and unobstructed by the designs of power-hungry legislators and executives in Washington. History has no shortage of King Herods.

Friday, December 23, 2011

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner was overheard loudly complaining on the phone in the Delta Lounge at Reagan National Airport outside Washington about Obama's healthy food initiative.

According to Fishbowl DC, which first reported the lawmaker's remarks, Sensenbrenner was recounting a recent conversation he'd had at church event in Wisconsin.

Obama, Sensenbrenner said loudly, "lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself."

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Daniel Bice, Sensenbrenner made a similar remark at the Wisconsin church he was referencing in his phone call, telling attendees there that Obama has a "big butt."

The Wisconsin lawmaker—who, it must noted, is a bit rotund--sent a personal note to Obama apologizing for his remarks, his spokeswoman Amanda Infield tells Yahoo News. She declined to go into detail about what the note said.

In a statement to reporters, the lawmaker reiterated his apology. "I regret my inappropriate comment, and I have sent a personal note to the First Lady apologizing," he said.

Some, like the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson believe that after the House agreed to the Senate’s bipartisan agreement:

“Republicans let us glimpse the rift between establishment pragmatists and Tea Party ideologues. There may be hope for the republic after all.”

The vote, of course, settles nothing, it is merely a two-month extension. A tax cut and a welfare check. The best for both of Washington’s parties. We’ll be back shortly for another round of Washington kabuki theatre where the two parties will pretend to find a solution for the economy and the looming entitlement crisis. For Robinson, the issue is appearing “sensible” and getting things done.

Likewise, another Post columnist, Jennifer Rubin, was also ruminating on the radicalism that is overtaking the Republican Party...

Eric Dondero, the former senior aide to Ron Paul who is now a fierce critic of Paul's foreign policy left this comment on my blog recently, the last I've heard from him in months now... and he actually had something very nice (and very true) to say about Ron Paul regarding the latest attempt by the media to smear him!

I worked for the guy for 12 years as his personal assistant/travel aide. I can honestly say I never heard a racist word come out of his mouth in that entire time.

There were only two instances in that entire time that could be categorized as possibly "homophobic." But that's it.

Paul is in no way an Anti-Semite as many charge. He has no problem with Jews in the United States. He is however, passionately opposed to Israel, and wishes the State would not even exist. He sees it as a burden on the US taxpayer and too much of a hassle for our foreign policy.

There's many lies being spread by both sides these days, the diehard Paulists, and the liberal media. Nobody wants to bother to get the facts straight. Doesn't fit either one of their agendas.

Bottom line: Ron Paul is not a racist, or bigot or anti-Semite. But he does personally feel uncomfortable around homosexuals, (as do a huge number of older folks), and he most certainly opposes Israelis, (not Jews!).

Eric Dondero, Fmr. Senior Aide
US Cong. Ron Paul (R-TX)
1997-2003

And for those of you who don't know Eric Dondero, he positively detests Ron Paul's foreign policy and bashes Ron Paul on a regular basis. I don't know that I've ever heard him say anything nice about Ron Paul, other than the typical "he's solid on domestic policy" preface to a rant about how loony Ron Paul is and how he should be no where near the White House.

If any Republican would be inclined to pile on with the racist accusations, it would be Eric Dondero, and if any Republican would have the credentials to do so given his close association with Paul for many years, it would be Eric Dondero... and yet Dondero says he has never heard Ron Paul utter a single racist word.

Curious, isn't it? Ron Paul isn't exactly known for self-editing, not on camera in front of millions of viewers, and therefore certainly not in private among close associates. And Eric Dondero, who can't stand Ron Paul, and who even takes his jabs at Ron Paul's foreign policy in the comment above, publicly claims that he never once heard Ron Paul utter a racist word.

So can we just talk about the issues now? Instead ofthis drivel that Ron Paul did not write? ...unless you're calling Ron Paul of all people, a liar ...which would be stupid of you.

They are the last words of Steve Jobs, reported by his sister, the novelist Mona Simpson, who was at his bedside. In her eulogy, a version of which was published in the New York Times, she spoke of how he looked at his children "as if he couldn't unlock his gaze." He'd said goodbye to her, told her of his sorrow that they wouldn't be able to be old together, "that he was going to a better place." In his final hours his breathing was deep, uneven, as if he were climbing.

"Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: 'OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.'"

The caps are Simpson's, and if she meant to impart a sense of wonder and mystery she succeeded. "Oh wow" is not a bad way to express the bigness, power and force of life, and death. And of love, by which he was literally surrounded.

I wondered too, after reading the eulogy, if I was right to infer that Jobs saw something, and if so, what did he see? What happened there that he looked away from his family and expressed what sounds like awe? I thought of a story told by a friend, whose grown son had died, at home, in a hospice. The family was ringed around his bed. As Robert breathed his last an infant in the room let out a great baby laugh as if he saw something joyous, wonderful, and gestured toward the area above Robert's head. The infant's mother, startled, moved to shush him but my friend, her mother, said no, maybe he's just reacting to . . . something only babies see.

In a partisan face off over how long to extend a payroll tax cut that expires soon and amounts to an extra $40 per biweekly pay period for the average American worker, the White House stirred up some discussion on Twitter by tweeting out: What does #40Dollars mean to you? But the latestfiscal policy battle over a forty dollar tax cut every two weeks and whether to extend it for two months or two years (and whether to attach this or that condition to the tax cut, and whether people with Ds next to their name are more awesome than people with Rs) is just another distraction from the biggest, baddest, most insidious tax that American workers have to pay every year– the inflation tax.

Congress would much rather use up your attention span on fighting over $80 a month so that you don’t notice just how much inflation tax you pay every time you buy gas, pay your electric bill, or pick up groceries. Because if you did notice and started speaking up, then Congress might have to decide which bailouts, pet projects, non-defensive wars, and other goodies they would have to cut in order to pay for an inflation tax holiday. How much would you save if they were to cut the inflation tax? Let’s put it in the White House’s terms and see just how much you could do with an extra $40 every two weeks… in 1912 dollars, the year before the inflation tax began with the creation of the Fed…

Thursday, December 22, 2011

Kurt Wallace provides some fascinating commentary using expert body language analysis to conclude that while pressing Ron Paul over and over again about the newsletters with racist content written under his name in the 1980s, CNN report Gloria Borger's body language could indicate something like "I realize I am interviewing a kind gentleman who is real and honest and I feel bad for what I just did."

Ron Paul's supporters are sure of one thing: Their candidate has always been consistent—a point Dr. Paul himself has been making with increasing frequency. It's a thought that comes up with a certain inevitability now in those roundtables on the Republican field. One cable commentator genially instructed us last Friday, "You have to give Paul credit for sticking to his beliefs."

He was speaking, it's hardly necessary to say, of a man who holds some noteworthy views in a candidate for the presidency of the United States. One who is the best-known of our homegrown propagandists for our chief enemies in the world. One who has made himself a leading spokesman for, and recycler of, the long and familiar litany of charges that point to the United States as a leading agent of evil and injustice, the militarist victimizer of millions who want only to live in peace.

Rabinowitz and her ilk are the actual propagandists for our chief enemies in the world-- America's chief enemy is Washington.

In the United States today, the First Amendment is under attack like never before. Technological innovations such as the Internet have made it possible for average Americans to communicate directly with one another in ways that completely bypass the mainstream media, and this is making the elite very uncomfortable. They have decided that they better come after our free speech before it is too late. Right now, free speech in America is being chipped away at it in thousands of different ways. On the one hand, you have the disciples of "political correctness" that want to make all forms of speech that are "offensive" to anyone against the law. On the other hand, you have those that are obsessed with "national security" that want to ban all speech that is critical of the U.S. government or the U.S. military. These twin forces are constantly seeking to push the First Amendment into a smaller and smaller box. If you say the wrong thing in America today, your website might be shut down, you could be suspended from school, you may find yourself out of a job and there is now even a possibility that you could be arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without a trial.

Usually those that are targeted for their speech are those that the "establishment" does not like. That would include free thinkers, political activists, libertarians, true conservatives and Christians.

Instead of seeing the value in allowing everyone to say what they think, we are being taught in America today that there is speech that is "acceptable" and speech that is "not acceptable".

If we allow this attack on the First Amendment to continue, eventually we will wake up in a country where our freedom of speech is totally gone.

The following are 18 examples of how the elite are coming for our free speech...

Dec 21, 2011 - Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto on the media and top Republicans continuing to discount Rep. Ron Paul even as he surges in the polls (this includes great historical examples of Republicans who the media said would never win, including Ronald Reagan):

This Christmas season, to much fanfare, Walmart brought back their layaway program.

For those Internet intellectuals among us too rich and separate from the ails of the working man to understand the incentives behind layaway plans, let me explain the concept.

By purchasing an item on layaway, you select your item, put down a deposit and make regular payments until the item is fully paid off - without interest. Only then are you allowed to take the item home.

...wait, what?

Yes, that's how layaway plans work. There is no "getting the item" early advantage as with a credit system. So, we are left with only 2 possible benefits for those participating.

1) Fear of the item running out of stock.
Putting the item on layaway guarantees you securing the item once you are able to fully pay for it. However, unless the item in question is a hot Christmas toy, Walmart largely sells commodities. In the majority of scenarios, there is no real fear of the item going out of stock. Which brings us to the reality that...

2) Layaway plans are a savings tool.
Some people are fully aware of their personal financial temptations, and like being able to immediately put the money toward a specific item as soon as they get it. That way, the odds of the money being diverted to something else drastically falls.

So, what can layaway plans teach us about social security reform?

One of the biggest fears of social security privatization is that people are morons - incapable of planning for the future. And yet, here we have a free-market example of lower-income individuals using non-coercive savings programs to plan for their future. Shocking, isn't it?

Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty appeared on CNN's Out Front with Erin Burnett to discuss Ron Paul's rise in the polls in Iowa, what it is about Paul's limited government message that is resonating with voters, and why Paul walked away from a CNN interview when questioned again about his 20-year-old newsletters.